A letter to a grandchild having problems in school.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: [on] MANAGEMENT - Viewpoint essay

I hope you will read this. It is sent with love and belief in you, but I wouldn't blame you ii you tossed it because I should have tried to make a better connection with you long ago.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The next couple of paragraphs are about my high school and college days, and we share some striking similarities so slick with me for a few lines and see if you agree.

I had to be one of the worst high school students in Buffalo, N.Y. Somewhere near the beginning I just quit doing the work. I got nothing but Cs and Ds for four years, but I really didn't care.

There were no drugs in those days back in 1953, but I discovered beer at an early age. And I bad a paper route for pocket money. I used to go door to door on my bike when I was 16 and collect for the paper. Then I would bike to a place called "Augie's Bar Fiesta" and drink with my friends. At that time the drinking age in New York was 18, and I thought I was passing for 18 while my bike was parked out back, but Augie knew all along.

I wasn't dumb, but I was not interested in school, and I barely got out of high school. I was having problems at home. I thought my father hated me because all he did was tell me how screwed up I was, how bad my table manners were and how I would never amount to anything. And he drank a lot, and I disliked him even more when he was loaded. Then I started to be a big beer drinker, too. Co figure.

A couple of teachers tried to get me to care. I got pushed around by them a couple of times. One guy got so frustrated telling me I was wasting my life that he hit me really hard a couple of times (broke my glasses). But they couldn't get me to be interested. Probably the reason I graduated from high school was that they had given up trying to help me, and they wanted the room for somebody who actually cared about his future.

I did the same thing for most of college. I loafed through, playing pinochle every day in the student union with money I didn't have, doing just enough to get my Cs, Ds and now a few Fs. I repeated some, but I didn't care much.

Somewhere around 20 I realized I was about to either graduate college or get kicked out, and I didn't know anything except pinochle. For some reason that's when I got interested in myself...